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Silence (Part Four) - Musings and Meditations

filipvk

Updated: 3 days ago




“Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation,”

Rumi



Ibolya sings in the forest, Tórdai Hasadék, Romania, October 2024

Below this post you will find a short video with the recording of her singing.





Audio version of this musing, read by me.







Dear Friends,


In the previous three musings, I talked about silence, about media- and storysilence, and about meditation as a way to nurture silence.


Silence needs an opposite to exist - if there were only silence, we would not know silence as silence. It is only through its contrast to sound that we can perceive silence as a phenomenon, and appreciate and cherish it.


Speak only if it improves upon the silence”, Ghandi once said.

Rumi said, “Silence is the language of God, everything else is poor translation.


Perhaps the translation most true to the language of God is music. And perhaps music is the best thing we have to offer, after silence. Whether music can also be an improvement of silence?...I do believe so.

Perhaps silence and music are two sides of the same coin. American composer John Cage once united the two in his famous (or infamous) piece 4'33”, which consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of... silence.

And whether you believe it or not, 4'33” just ‘played’ here on my laptop (in the performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker) while I was writing, and I had to pause it because the silence of that piece disturbed me while writing, just as music would have disturbed me (I have never been able to work with music in the background). Somehow that silence was much more palpable than the “ordinary” background silence in this room in which I write.

Courtesy of the Berliner Philharmoniker.


 



Whatever else you may think about that, it seems clear to me that silence and music are inextricably  linked. Consider the silence right before a musician (or orchestra) begins a performance (how would the silence before a 4'33” performance differ from the silence of the piece itself, I find myself wondering now).

That silence right before a concert performance is a reflection of the musician's (or orchestra's) concentration as they get ready to play, and the audience as well needs that silence to bring the attention completely into the moment in anticipation of the first notes. That silence is like the soundboard, the ground in which the music can exist, just as space is the ground within which stars and planets can exist. Imagine if there were no silence before a performance in a concert hall. That you simply slump down in your seat and the conductor immediately takes off before everyone is even seated, or while people are still entering the hall and are still coughing, sneezing or talking noisily. The silence is also a matter of respect for what is to come, of receptivity, attention and focus. The silence creates the framework within which the sounds can emerge, just as the white canvas is the ground on which the painter can work.

How much energy can there be in the silence just before the music begins? Anyone who ever goes to a concert will probably agree that those silences can be very intense.





I was recently able to experience such a wonderful silence in a magical place, and that silence was also a preparation for equally wonderful music.

In October of 2024, so a couple of months ago at the time of this writing, I was in Romania with my partner Agnes who was conducting a workshop for two weekends in the city of Cluj-Napoca.

Cluj is called Koloszvár to Hungarians, since the city is located in Transylvania, the vast territory that belonged to Hungary until 1920 but was ceded to Romania in the Treaty of Trianon. Despite large forced migrations under Communist rule, Transylvania still today is home to a large Hungarian-speaking population. Hence Agnes, who is Hungarian, was able to conduct her workshops in her native language in Cluj/ Koloszvár.


Between the two weekends we went with a few people from the area, who had become friends in the meantime, to a mountainous region near a nature reserve not far from the city. There is also a beautiful gorge in the mountains, the Tórdai Hasadék: a real canyon carved by the river Hasdate. This protected area is very beautiful, and a walk through this gorge could not be missed.


Also in our company was Ibolya Pall, a Hungarian-speaking friend of Agnes who lives in Romania.

Ibolya sings. And how. She is a master at interpreting old Hungarian folk songs, and she can bring them to life in their ancient richness and energy and shamanic primal power. This was evident the night before when she sang at a surprise party for my birthday, a delightful gift.

During our walk through the rocky gorge, along a sometimes strenuous path carved into the rocks beside the river, we stopped in a somewhat wider stretch where beautiful trees still adorned their autumn colors and the yellow and red colors of the leaves contrasted nicely with the gray of the granite rock walls. It was a very quiet spot, and since it was a weekday, there were not so many other hikers at this spot that afternoon.



Tórdai Hasadék, Romania, October 2024.





Ibolya had resolved to sing for us right then and there, and she wanted to perform some of the old songs in her repertoire in this beautiful spot in the forest in the gorge.

As we settled down on a bench and some tree stumps, Ibolya turned in the direction of the river, walked a little further, stood still and looked at the river, as she prepared to sing. And just as the silence in a concert hall can be so full of energy and anticipation, pregnant with the music to follow, this silence too was very dense, and a coalescing of energy and intention for the sound to follow. Ibolya took her time, and the silence lasted for a while.

It was a silence that was also quite different from the silence in a concert hall, and of course all sorts of things could be heard: the murmur of the fast-flowing river, the rustling of leaves in the wind, and all the other sounds of a forest on a beautiful autumn day. Yet the sum of all the sounds in a forest is also a kind of silence, and perhaps together with music even one of the possible improvements upon silence. Or at least equivalent, and an acceptable translation of the silence of God that Rumi was talking about.


So the silence lasted for a while, and the duration only added to its intensity. For silence tends to become more intense the longer it lasts. It was also a beautiful silence, Ibolya's silence mixed with the sounds of the forest and the tension that hung in the air waiting for the song to begin. If there are different kinds of silence, this was one of the very special ones.


But then came the moment when the silence finally gave way to Ibolya's voice, and the ancient song echoed through the trees, making its way across the river to the cliffs on the other side, meandering through the leaves in the treetops, embracing the bushes and stumps along the way in its warmth and deep power.

It was a song for nature, addressed to the river and the trees and bushes and the birds:




If I was a river, 

I would know no grief. 


I would meander singing 

through mountains and valleys. 


I would meander singing 

through mountains and valleys, 


I would lay sand on the meadows. 

I would lay sand on the meadows 


and raise violets on river shores. 


My sweet bird, my sweet little bird, 

my gently singing black bird, 


let your tongue resonate with your wonderful melody. 

Let your tongue resonate with your wonderful melody, 


whistling a soothing song to my heart.





I probably don't need to add how beautiful it all was: the location, the forest, the river, the silence before the singing filled with the sounds of that river and forest, and then the wonderful sounds of this ancient song performed by Ibolya. Magical it was. 



And it was no coincidence that this ancient song was about nature, or rather, talking to nature.

The ancients knew what we have forgotten: that nature is not a machine that unconsciously unwinds toward meaningless entropy and death. Not a soulless battleground where selfish genes are engaged in futile competition merely to survive and continue that useless circus until the futile Newtonian mechanics have run their course .

Virtually all humans who have ever lived (for the number-buffs, that's about 117 billion by now) believed, or rather knew and experienced, that nature, of which we are an inseparable part, is conscious and animated in its entirety.


This tradition is sometimes called Animism, and although many different versions and nuances of it have existed in the many cultures that our planet has known until now, they have in common that nature and mankind are not separated, and that not only everything that is alive is animated (trees, plants, animals, people), but also everything that is not alive at first sight: rocks, earth, water, clouds, the sun, planets...everything is animated, and everything is conscious.

And folk songs that are old enough will often embody and express that: everything is animate, everything is sacred too, everything is imbued with an energy that is of a divine nature.





A person who believes, or rather knows, that nature is as much alive and conscious as we are, will know her- or himself to be in a fundamentally different relationship with that nature. Whomever feels part of a greater whole that is permeated on all levels with intelligence and purpose, she or he will also address that nature , communicate with it, and yes, also sing to it. And she or he knows that nature actually hears that voice and responds to it, since the separation between us and nature is an illusion, a misunderstanding of modernity, a temporary form of in-sanity that currently makes us as disoriented as the proverbial headless chicken.


Today we like to think that we know better, and that science has proven conclusively that nature is a mechanism without meaning or purpose, let alone consciousness. We think we are so much smarter than those billions of people who came before us and on whose shoulders we stand, the countless generations of our ancestors who had the same cognitive abilities as ourselves for hundreds of thousands of years. We think they were stupid, superstitious and ignorant.


But what if it was the other way around? What if all of our ancestors were right, and had a clearer understanding of the nature of reality than we do? What if we are the ones who are superstitious? What if the idea that only science can give us information about reality is the real superstition, a neurotic dissociation from all other forms of knowledge about nature and about ourselves? And what if it actually turns out that we often don’t even know what science is beginning to tell us about nature today? What if science is increasingly putting forward propositions that actually seem to very much confirm what the ancients knew?

For a growing group of scientists is also telling us that nature is conscious, and permeated with intelligence and purpose. And that view, like the original animism, exists in a number of variations and nuances, which, however, as much as animism, have some things as common denominators: the separation between mankind and nature is an illusion. Everything in nature, from plants to animals to planets or even atoms or neutrons: everything is imbued with consciousness or is even a creation by or in consciousness. The distinction between the observer and the observed is an illusion. Everything is part of one conscious entity and any division of that whole into parts is a mere symbolic act that can have practical value but is never an accurate representation of ‘reality’. 

If these propositions seem alien to you, it is not surprising because we are all so imbued with the idea of a universe that is dead, mechanical and unconscious. But these new (and ancient) propositions are the result of empirical scientific research, and were proposed by some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.


In upcoming musings, I will elaborate further on some of these propositions, and give the floor to some of those prominent scientists who have suggested these ideas. Not because we are only supposed to believe anything when prominent scientists tell us so, an idea that has actually become a kind of religion in itself, but rather because the intersection of science and traditional wisdom or mysticism is a particularly fascinating domain. Science is undoubtedly a hugely important tool for examining the world, and the results of scientific research that provide a repeatable and verifiable picture of forces and relationships that until recently were relegated to the realm of esotericism and mysticism are extremely fascinating.

This will remain a thread in the blog and also a central theme in the book I plan to start this year. I have already touched on some of these ideas in the blog posts ‘Science and the Emerging New Paradigm,’ ‘The Scientist, the Monk and the Philosopher,’ and ‘Consciousness and the Living Planet,’ as well as in the musings ‘Five Sigma’,  ‘A Wondrous Afternoon with an Extraordinary Scientist, Gentleman and Visionary,’ and ‘It's All Magic (Part One and Part Two)’.






If we were to believe or rather know again that nature and we are one and indivisible whole, that all of nature is animated and conscious, how different would our relationship with that nature and with our planet be? Would we still be on the verge of destroying that planet and that nature? Would we still behave like tyrants trying to dominate, oppress and exploit nature with all our might?

If we were to relate to nature in such a way that we could sing to her again, to the trees, the rivers and the birds, would we at the same time be able to plunder, cut down, poison and exterminate nature and all life in it?


The findings in the latest science and in the wisdom traditions that are as old as humanity itself, can and should find each other in a new story that can make us sing again. It is not enough to merely survive on this planet, we need to be in intimate relation to it again, we need to reconnect with it as mother and child, or as lovers.

When it will be much more natural to sing for the forest than to cut it down, then we may well be on the right track again. That does not mean that from then onwards we may never cut down a tree again, but rather that whenever we do take something from nature, be it a tree or a plant or an animal, we do so in a spirit of gratitude and endless respect for the wonder of this whole of which we are a part, and that we reciprocate that gift with our own gift: that of a loving connection with all that exists, and a set of actions and intentions that honors the gifts we are privileged to receive daily from nature, something Robin Wall Kimmerer calls the “Honorable Harvest,” after the tradition of (among others) many of the First Nations in what is now the United States





And so we circle back again from silence to what we usually call “ecology”.

The silence in the forest, followed by the singing to that forest and to the river, it was a magical experience that day. 

It also reminded me of the singing for the Northern Lights, which I talked about in the musing ‘It's all magic (part two). There, too, the singing for the lights was part of an ancient folk culture, and an expression of the shared knowledge that we and nature are one and indivisibly whole. We are, as Alan Watts put it, not like “birds landing on the bare branches of a tree” but like “apples growing out of an apple tree”. We ourselves are nature, we grow out of nature, and everything that lives is our family, or that part of ourselves that is outside our skin.


After Ibolya’s song, there was silence again for a moment, broken only by the sounds of the forest and by the voices of some other hikers who were now nearby. Again, the silence after the song was different from the silence before the song, just as the silence after the final notes of a concert is different from the silence filled with expectation just before the performance begins. Where there is first anticipation, expectation, curiosity, the silence after the song or concert is imbued with a different energy, which may also be different for each person present. Gratitude, fulfillment, recognition, and a whole array of other energies and emotions and thoughts can fill the silence after the music, leaving us transformed. Silent, but in a different way.


The walk continued that day, and there were more very beautiful moments and memorable experiences, but this one stuck with me the most: the silence in the forest in the gorge, before the music began. And the singing of Ibolya, the beautiful old song for the trees, the grass, the river and the birds. The voice that told us what we all need to remember: everything out there that lives, everything we call “nature,” we are that.

Below you can enjoy the video with the recording of Ibolya’s singing. With her permission, I share the recording of that special moment. However, I did not record the silence before it. I will leave that silence to the power of your imagination. 


Thanks for reading, and until the next installment,


All the best to you,

Filip


Ibolya sings in the forest. (2'38")




Ibolya (right) and Agnes near Tordai Hasadék, Romania, October 2024



 



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